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CHRIS STEVENSON, QMI Agency

If Donald Fehr could do one thing to help the NHL labour situation, it would be to lay off the comparisons with baseball.

He has made it clear the players would be willing to accept the baseball system, but that is hardly sports utopia.

Fehr likes to mention the years of labour peace baseball has enjoyed and that's a fair comment. But years of labour peace are only one part of the equation in terms of what makes a dynamic and healthy sports league.

Hope is the biggest and best product a sports team has to market. Under the system engineered by Fehr, the rich in baseball are rewarded and the smaller markets, despite the apparent cure-all of revenue sharing, are exiled to mediocrity.

For sure, there are going to be blips: The Oakland A's grab a playoff spot every now and again with a minuscule payroll (second lowest in MLB this year), but they don't win championships.

The St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants, who met in the National League Championship Series, are both top-10 teams in payroll this season. (Spending big is no guarantee of success, either, as the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Angels have proved.)

The average rank in payroll of the past six winners of the World Series is 7.6.

The lowest-ranked team to win during that span was the Philadelphia Phillies (12th in 2008).

That won't change much after this year's World Series is decided as the Detroit Tigers are ranked fifth and the Giants seventh.

MLB has had one repeat winner, the Cardinals, during that time although there could be another this year as the Giants won in 2010.

The NHL had seven different winners of the Stanley Cup during the previous collective bargaining agreement with the winners ranked in payroll from No. 1 (the Boston Bruins two years ago, according to NHLnumbers.com) to No. 16 (the Carolina Hurricanes in 2006).

In a cap system the pool of teams capable of winning is bigger because the big-market teams can't distance themselves as much from the pack. There are owners in the NHL making gobs of money who can't spend it, at least not on players.

Which brings us to the current situation in the NHL.

The stalemate in the current negotiations stems from the fact that the math doesn't work: The players cannot have every dollar of their current contracts honoured while still having the owners achieve their goal of a 50-50 split in hockey-related revenue for next season. The players have said they'll take that 50-50 split if the owners make good on the current deals.

Just spitballing a concept here (one agent said it was "plausible," which is better than what has been said about the deals on the table right now): So, why not a hybrid system that could bridge the issues, a transition system that would allow the players to get the money owed on their current deals and the owners to get to their 50-50 goal? Nobody has to do anything they've said they wouldn't do.

With a nod to The Donald and his luxury tax system, why not, for a phasing-in period, allow the big-market teams to buy up the difference between the 50-50 split and what the NHL owes players on existing deals until the players are "made whole"? The big-budget teams could get more cap space on a temporary basis -- outside the system -- in exchange for funding the "make whole" fund.

If the No. 1 priority for the players is to get paid what they're owed, they'll get that. The difference between 50-50 and what a player is owed on his existing contract could be made up from the fund until his deal expires. According to one agent Tuesday, there are about 270 contracts due to expire after this season and another 200 or so after next year. That's close to 500 players who will have been "made whole" within two years. The difference between 50-50 and what the players are owed is about $231 million this season, but would drop dramatically as existing deals expire. Even the make-whole provision on those long-term "back-diving" deals would be negligible as time goes on.

The thing works only if there are enough big-market teams willing to spend to fund the pot until all the players' existing deals are honoured, but how many teams were closing in on $90-million payrolls in 2004 when revenues were way less than what they are now? The amount teams could exceed the cap would be reduced as the make-whole provision is satisfied.

The owners take part voluntarily and the make-whole provision is not "players paying players."

Just a thought -- perhaps slightly ill-conceived and lacking in detail -- but a thought.